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Vikings: Why Ragnar Lothbrok Plotted His Own Death In Season 4
Vikings season 4 did something that TV shows rarely do: it killed off its main character, Ragnar Lothbrok. The Norse king's death - execution by being dropped into a pit of venomous snakes - was lifted straight from the Viking sagas, and was necessary for the show to move on and to focus on his sons. But within the show, Ragnar's plotting of his own death was actually his greatest victory.
Introduced as a mere farmer in Vikings season 1, Ragnar's curiosity about the world led him to sail west and lead raids on England. He made enemies along the way, and it was by vanquishing those enemies that Ragnar became the Earl of Kattegat, and later became a king. Vikings season 4 was the story of Ragnar's downfall. He developed a drug addiction, suffered a devastating defeat during the Second Siege of Paris, and disappeared from Kattegat for many years afterwards.
When Ragnar returned to Kattegat he was no longer in any fit state to conquer anything. An old man with a weakened body and a tarnished reputation, he had to resort to digging up his horde of treasure - which he should have been saving to enjoy in Valhalla - in order to bribe a small crew of raiders to sail with him to England. A storm destroyed his ships and Ragnar arrived to exact his revenge with no allies except for his disabled son, Ivar the Boneless. He certainly didn't look like much of a threat, but in dying, Ragnar did more damage to England than he'd ever done in life. In his own words, it was "part of a larger and bolder strategy."
Ragnar Became An Atheist Before His Death
Ragnar's curious mind led him to question everything - including the gods themselves. Conflict between the Norse pantheon and Christianity had been a key theme of Vikings from the start, embodied by the relationship between Ragnar and his beloved friend, Athelstan. The two characters responded very differently to the clash of religions in their lives. Athelstan found himself torn between his Christian upbringing and his years as a monk, and his kinship with the Vikings and their gods after he was captured. He was never able to fully choose between the Norse gods and the Christian god until shortly before his death, when he was born again and fully embraced Christianity. Conversely, the more Ragnar was exposed to Athelstan's religion, the more he seemed to doubt whether the gods existed at all. However, he recognized that the gods - real or not - had power over people, and began using that to his advantage.
There were actually two occasions on which Ragnar used his own death as a strategic move. During the First Siege of Paris, in Vikings season 3, he pretended to have converted to Christianity and asked to be baptised. He then faked his death so that his casket would be carried into the heart of the city for a Christian burial, before dramatically bursting out of it and opening the gates of Paris for his army to wreak havoc. This was the first indication that, in the wake of Athelstan's death, Ragnar had replaced his faith in the gods with faith in himself. While recovering from the injuries he received in Paris, Ragnar had a vision of the gates of Valhalla closing to him. While this could be interpreted as meaning that he was simply not ready to die yet, it could also be seen as the moment Ragnar ceased to believe in Valhalla.
In Vikings season 4, Ragnar made his loss of faith clear when, on the road to his execution, his blind cart driver suddenly turned into Kattegat's Seer. Accusing his prophecies of being vague, confusing, and self-fulfilling, Ragnar told the Seer, "I don't believe in the gods' existence. Man is the master of his own fate, not the gods. The gods are man's creation, to give answers that they are too afraid to give themselves." At the end of his life, Ragnar was no longer willing to accept that the gods had already decided the manner of his death. Instead, he proudly proclaimed that he shaped his own destiny, and that he alone plotted the course of his death.
Ragnar Was Ready To Die (And Had Been For A While)
From the moment he returned to Kattegat after Vikings' season 4 time jump, it was clear that Ragnar wanted to die. He later confessed to King Ecbert, "death has been uppermost on my mind for some time." First Ragnar challenged his sons to kill him and become king if they dared (they did not). Then he hung himself from a tree, in an homage to the myth of Odin hanging himself from the tree Yggdrasil (the parallel to the one-eyed Allfather returns in Ragnar's death scene, when one of his eyes is swollen shut from a beating). After the rope snapped, sparing his life, Ragnar decided with zeal to return to England for one last raid, formulating a plan to use his own death to set up his enemies for defeat, and his sons for victory and fame. It was clear that he had no intention of ever returning to Kattegat; he took the time to say goodbye to all of his loved ones, and to properly make peace with Floki before he left.
Why Ragnar Wanted To Be Executed By King Ælle
The basic goal of Ragnar's death was to set up the destruction of both King Ecbert and King Ælle. There had never been any love lost between Ragnar and Ælle, but their similar personalities and shared love for Athelstan meant that Ragnar and Ecbert had a great deal of respect for each other. Despite this, Ragnar couldn't die without setting up revenge for the slaughter of the Viking settlement many years before. He tricked Ecbert into believing this crime was forgiven so that Ecbert would hand him over to Ælle for execution and let Ivar go free, but in fact told Ivar to take revenge on both Ælle and Ecbert.
There was more to Ragnar's plan than simple revenge, however. In Vikings season 2 he asked the Seer what would become of his sons, and was told that they would become more famous than him. In particular, Ragnar saw the potential for greatness in Ivar, telling his youngest son that his non-functioning legs had given him a strength that his brothers lacked. The nature of Ragnar's death was also his final lesson for Ivar: he emphasized that people would always underestimate him because of his legs, just like Ragnar's own enemies underestimated him when he appeared to be nothing more than a weak old man in rags.
Believing that he had chosen his own fate, Ragnar decided to guide the fate of his sons as well. In giving them the motivation of avenging his death, he also gave them the rallying cry that they would need to raise the great heathen army. In life, Ragnar had to spend every last scrap of gold he had just to put together a pathetic raiding crew; but in death, he turned himself into a legend that could unite the people of the North and put his sons on the path to glory.
How Ragnar's Plan Played Out After His Death
Despite his legendary status and his accomplishments as an explorer, Ragnar's military victories were actually somewhat limited. He led surprise raids on Northumbria that were successful, but when he led an army to Wessex for the first time they were defeated by King Ecbert's use of Roman military tactics. He suffered another brutal and costly defeat during the initial battle of the First Siege of Paris, and was defeated twice during the Second Siege of Paris, returning home a broken man.
Whereas Ragnar made little headway into conquering England during his own life, his death wreaked havoc on the country as his sons - Bjorn, Ubbe, Hvitserk, Sigurd, and Ivar - waged war with an assembled army of thousands. Ivar in particular proved to be a far better military strategist than his father. Bjorn led the initial victory against King Ælle with sheer brute force, but Ivar used cunning to confuse King Ecbert's army and draw them into a chokehold, forcing Ecbert's family to flee and abandon him to his fate. Ælle was gruesomely killed when Bjorn performed the blood eagle ritual upon him, while Ecbert was permitted a more peaceful death of cutting his own wrists. After exacting Ragnar's revenge, his sons were able to conquer the city of York, establishing a stronghold there and using Ivar's clever strategies to repel Saxon attempts to reclaim it.
It was said many times in Vikings that Ragnar's real dream wasn't simply to raid England, but to establish some land for his people there. Through the careful design of his own death he was finally able to succeed in this goal. Regardless of whether or not Valhalla exists, and whether Ragnar went there, he lived on after death by building a legacy through his sons. Of course, that legacy got a bit off-track in Vikings season 5 when his sons started fighting among themselves, but Ragnar can't really be blamed for that.
